wPV Chloe Cunliffe (WaHS) 14-9i (4.50) AJR HSR [14-8 AJr out]

[18.99s]

He'd like to see if he can develop his sport but like Ms. Cunliffe has no interest in college, what are his options in the US?

Next to none, unless somebody in his family will coach him.

[Jshapco2]

I don't think she will have a hard time finding a sponsor if she breaks 15' . Its an Olympic year and she will create plenty of exposure for any company that picks her up.

[Dave]

Next to none, unless somebody in his family will coach him.

I suppose this mythical young man could go work with Earl Bell.

[Cooter Brown]

She could always do the Instagram/social media hustle on the side, which probably ends up creating more income that what she'd make on the track.

[tandfman]

Pardon my ignorance of such things, but could you explain how an athlete who isn't good enough to make a living as a pole vaulter can make decent money by doing the "Instagram/social media hustle" on the side.

[TN1965]

Name a single top (not quite good) foreign vaulter that has bothered to come to the US to vault in college.

Are you talking about someone like Stefanidi, who won a World Youth title and a World Junior medal? She bothered to come to the US to attend Stanford.

[gh]

Tina Šutej was World Junior silver medalist before she came to Arkansas and won a pair of NCAA titles.

[Cooter Brown]

Pardon my ignorance of such things, but could you explain how an athlete who isn't good enough to make a living as a pole vaulter can make decent money by doing the "Instagram/social media hustle" on the side.

Go look at Alysha Newman's Instagram and then go look at every woman ranked above her today or in past. There's a reason she has triple the amount of followers than Sandi Morris, for example. She knows how to market herself and actively does it. Those 300K+ followers result in advertising and sponsorship opportunities, no matter how small. She'll post about all kinds of small products or companies and is being paid to do it. Even if you're getting $5-10K a pop, a few dozen of those a year and it's real money. That social media presence surely drives the dollars behind her Nike contract also.

[tandfman]

Got it. Thank you for that insight. I follow very few athletes on Instagram and none on Facebook. But I can see how an athlete can monetize social media activity.

[El Toro]

Got it. Thank you for that insight. I follow very few athletes on Instagram and none on Facebook. But I can see how an athlete can monetize social media activity.

If you want more stats, this website looks at Instagram(and Facebook as parent) from every conceivable angle. That's if you have all day to work through it!

The most interesting thing I learned from a quick skim was that number of followers was only =6th in importance for advertisers. Content, target audience and engagement rate were the top three, so this could make an athlete with a smaller but well targeted and engaged audience more lucrative than a more high profile Instagrammer that's not well matched to any particular product.